A New King On The Prowl
by Dylan Millwood
Summary: Challenge from Chillman22. Who would've thought that at the age of seven, Naruto would find something that hasn't been found for centuries? How will Konoha's enemies, from outside the village as well as inside it, be able to handle it's new protector? And will he be able to live up to his new legacy?


**Forest on the edge of Konoha.**

There was a peaceful quietness in the forest at night. Just outside of Konoha, nature was at peace, as though nothing can disturb it, not even the blond seven-year-old walking around on his own at night no less.

The boy was short for his age, and had nicely tanned skin, crystal blue eyes, marks on his cheeks that resembled three whisker marks on each cheek, and bright yellow hair that was spiky and stuck up in all directions like the spines of a sea urchin. He had on a thin white shirt, black shorts, blue sandals, and wore green goggles on his forehead. All of which looked like he'd had to raid them from a second-hand donations bin.

The boy was none other than Naruto Uzumaki. the Kyuubi no Kitsune's Jinchuriki, not that he knew that, but back to him.

Naruto stopped walking and sighed, "...Finally, I managed to sneak out. I guess all those stealth pranks paid off. At least now I can get away from all those stares, until someone comes to get me."

Continuing with his walk, the young boy couldn't help but wonder why everyone glared at him all the time, sure he pulled pranks on people who were mean to him now and again, but why was he so hated?

It was no secret that he was despised by the adult villagers and that they were doing everything they could to make the younger generation hate him as well. And the children of these hateful adults listened to their parents without question…like sheep trusting their shepherd without a second thought. He sighed tiredly at his life so far. At this point, the people who treated him like a person was only a handful at best; the Sandaime, the father-daughter chef duo, and POSSIBLY two or three Jonin. At most, the total was around ten. At least, it was three.

Hardly anything in a village totaling in the thousands, if not hundred thousands…

Naruto shook his head to prevent his mind from going down that depressing road once again for the time being, he realized that for the moment that he wasn't in the village, meaning that it was best to forget about all of that, since he was in the forest to just get away from the villagers.

Unfortunately, Naruto ended up getting hit by a sudden downpour of rain. When the rain hit, it made Naruto jump, from how cold it was. As the rain picked up, he did the only thing any young child would do: He started running around with his arms over his head like a headless chicken to find somewhere to get out of the freezing downpour.

After a moment, something caught his eye, a hollowed-out tree, big enough for him to squeeze through. Stumbling into the hole, Naruto sat at the back of the tree, trying to warm himself up, "Damn rain, coming outta nowhere, I'm freezing my butt off because of you!"

His eyes slowly got use to his little hide-away. Though there was nothing special for a seven year old, it was still pretty cool to be hiding inside a tree. Looking around from left to right, on the right side of the tree was a big scroll, one he was sure wasn't there a second ago. "What the heck is a scroll doing inside a tree!?"

Moving towards it he began to unravel it, not thinking that there might be any traps or something protecting it, but then again, he was just a seven year old boy full of curiosity.

There were some writing in the scroll, unfortunately he couldn't read and understand big words, so all he got was 'Panther Scroll... write name in the bar with your blood,' everything else just flew over his head.

But looking at the scroll, Naruto remembered something. One time that the young boy had asked the Sandaime about how sometimes about how sometimes, the ninjas in the village could sometimes make things and even animals show up in bursts of smoke. The aged leader was happy to tell the boy the mechanics behind something called Summoning Contracts, Scrolls, and Animals. He told of how the scroll worked, how each contract had a different sequence of seals, and how each summoning had different rules or guidelines for their summoners to follow.

Using the knowledge he was given, the blonde bit his thumb and began to sign his name the scroll in his own blood before he placed a bloody handprint of his right palm underneath it.

Just as he finished, he felt a pull on his form before he and the scroll disappeared in a plume of smoke.

 **Unknown Location.**

Naruto ended up on his back due to the surprise "smoke-bomb" going off; the young boy slowly opened his eyes, only for them to widened in shock because he was looking into the eyes of a big panther that was staring at him with it's yellow eyes locked with his blue ones.

At seeing such a being above him, Naruto let out a silent scream, too terrified to scream his head off, like it was caught in his throat.

As for the panther, all it did was snort in his face before it turned around and started walking away with Naruto following with his eyes, still laying down, meaning he was watching the panther upside down.

Rolling over onto his front but with his eyes staying locked on the panther, Naruto then sat up, not knowing what was going on.

The panther looked back towards Naruto, causing the boy to become rigged with his mind in a fight or flight mode at the moment. The panther, on the other hand, moved it's head towards where it was going, with Naruto understanding what the panther wanted him to do. He thought it would be best to follow the big cat, since it was a better idea than to get attacked for not listening.

After ten minutes of walking, Naruto and the panther came upon a strange sight, for Naruto that is, the came upon a room, in the middle of the room was a sand pit, but that wasn't the strange part. What was strange was that around the walls of the room there was thousand of plants with purple-glowing flowers on the end.

Before Naruto could do anything, in a flash, his clothes were shredded, minus his boxes, causing him to yelp in surprise, though his head quickly looked towards the panther next to him. Though he tried to glare at the panther for ruining his clothes, it came out as a pout.

The panther, obviously not caring about the "glare," though did find it amusing, moved forward with a cross-armed Naruto following. As he did so, four more panthers appeared from the shadows and the panther he was following pointed with it's snout towards the sand pit. Understanding a little bit, Naruto got in with the sand going up to his knees, looking around and wondering what was going on.

Looking towards the panther again, the black cat seemed to release a sigh, then laid down and rolled onto it's back, silently telling Naruto to lay in the sand on his back, which he did.

One of the other panthers that appeared was moving something with it's tail, though while he was watching the other panthers started covering him in the sand up to his stomach, with Naruto being too nervous to try anything. Once it seemed to finish whatever it was doing, the panther that wasn't burring Naruto moved over to him while offering the blond boy a strange-shape bowl. Looking into the bowl, Naruto saw some purple liquid, getting the idea, Naruto drank the contents.

Once finished, Naruto began to feel drowsy and lightheaded, his head slowly laying on the sand behind him, everything around him becoming black.

Once Naruto was unconscious, the four panthers began to cover him in the sand completely.

 **Naruto's Dreamscape**

Naruto awoke to find himself in a strange place again. He was in a forest clearing, like those outside of Konoha, and the sky was purple. Before Naruto was a tree, with the tree holding a group of panthers. Before his eyes, one panther jumped down and started slowly walking towards Naruto.

Before Naruto's eyes, the panthers morphed into a group of men, one of them wearing an all black, skin-tight outfit, which Naruto had to admit looked awesome.

But, as with all things when facing unknown events, and with Naruto being a small child, he couldn't help but cry out, "WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON!?"

"Allow me to explain young one, you somehow found the Panther Summoning Scroll and was brought to the panther tribe for a test." Gaining Naruto's attention, the man continued, "You see, while the panthers can talk, they are not allowed to talk to humans that have not past the test, or until they have permission to talk to others through their summoner, but you see the test you are taking involves the herb you swallowed from the panthers."

Naruto's eyes widened, but the man continued, "Thankfully, you survived the test and at this moment I am here to tell you as much as I can in a short amount of time, you see my name is T'challa, but before my passing, I was also called The Black Panther, a name that has been passed down from my ancestors to my father then to myself. But before you get ahead of yourself, you are not a part of my family, but because of who left you that scroll to find, and how you underwent the ritual by drinking the fluid of the Heart-Shaped Herb and speaking with his father's spirit within the Ancestral Plane, becoming the Black Panther, I was able to bring you here."

"...So, this is supposed to let me finally meet my parents, and a stranger comes instead..." Naruto said, his small body starting to shake and he looked down.

The black-wearing man winced, realizing how that all sounded; a born orphan getting something like this meant that since he was meeting a stranger instead of his parents, they must be alive and had abandoned him... "Actually, your parents wanted to be here, but for some reason, they're in limbo."

"Limbo?" The seven year old asked, still sounding dejected.

"Means they're stuck somewhere else." T'challa explained.

"...So they want to be here, but since they're stuck, they asked you to come instead then...?" Naruto asked, getting a nod from the man.

"Right."

Naruto looked up, the ghost of a small smile tugging at his lips. As a born orphan, the fact that his parents had never been around had always hurt. But at least they wanted to be where he was now. They just couldn't get to him even though they wanted to.

"Thank you." he said, getting a kind smile from the man.

"You are welcome. So...are you ready to learn what is going on?" he replied.

Naruto nodded, and T'Challa started to explain the history and lore of something called the Black Panther mantle...

 **Real World.**

Naruto suddenly shot up with a gasp, taking big gulps of air as he did; looking around, almost forgetting where he was, his eyes a blur, with him scrambling backward into a corner of the room, trying to calm down. Seeing this, the panther that lead him to the sand pit went over to Naruto and nuzzled against him, trying to help him relax.

It took a few minutes before his breathing evened out, but slowly everything became steadier, his talk with T'Challa had taken what felt like hours, and awakening to finding himself buried alive...

The large feline before Naruto then did something that shocked him: the panther began to talk in a feminine voice, showing that it was in fact a female, "You ok? Disorienting, I know...the herb's ritual has that effect on people. Being buried doesn't help when you wake up, either..."

Naruto nodded, he couldn't say a say a thing, he was in a state of shock. With his body moving on auto-pilot, he reached up and scratched the giant cat between and behind her ears, thankful for the support, as well as to reaffirm that he was no longer dreaming.

The panther arched her back and enjoyed the way his fingers brushed through her fur and found the sweet spots on her head and behind her ears; purring deeply and the large cat smiled in a way that was too human-like. Eventually, the boy stopped, making her blink back into focus before seeming to pout at him. "...Did you have to stop? It felt so good..."

"...S-sorry..." Naruto said, trying to get a hold of himself, the seven-year-old boy still shocked and now afraid he'd upset the big cat. "...I-i-if you'd like...I could...I could give you a full-body scratching like that next time, then..." he gulped.

The next instant, the panther's face was up in his, their noses touching as their eyes locked, the panther's sparkling with amusement.

"I'll hold you to that. You're good at it, so a full-body treatment sounds great...you make a great masseuse with how good it would feel, at least if you asked me."

The boy paled, hesitating. Unable to tell just how serious she was, and if so, how to get out of doing it without his being mauled for it. He needed to stall for time to think!

"Oh...uh...well...umm...say, how come you can talk all of a sudden?" Naruto asked.

The feline backed up, her head tilted to one side and she blinked at the sudden topic change, "Oh, right, that...well, that's actually easy: you managed to survive the herb...it doesn't usually agree with chakra, and the reactions to it can be...nasty. Because of that, one of our rules has to be that the panthers can't talk to their summoners until after the herb, in case the person doesn't survive."

Naruto gulped loudly at that, he clearly understood what she meant by that rule.

"But you did, so no worries. Let me introduce myself, my name's Shuri—"

"Wait...T'Challa's sister?! The first female and youngest person to have the Black Panther mantle he told me about when I was buried?! You're _that_ Shuri?!" Naruto couldn't help but blurt in shock.

The panther, Shuri, had her jaw drop at that, then literally pounced and pinned Naruto, who was suddenly terrified again as he was under the large predatory animal.

"You met my brother?!" she demanded, shocked.

Naruto nodded frightfully.

Seeing that, Shuri backed off of him, feeling sorry and ashamed. "Sorry...but...but I miss my brother...hearing you met T'Challa because of the herb...it...after he died, I...I'm sorry..."

She looked at him again as a hand started scratching her ears again "...I understand...when your brother told me what the herb could do...I wanted to see my parents. Even if they were gone, at least I would have found out who they were...it isn't wrong to want to be with family..." the whisker-faced boy said softly.

Shuri took a deep breath through her nose, glad he was understanding and forgiving, "Thank you..." she said, "Back to what I was saying before; you've past the test of the Heart-Shaped Herb. Now we of the Panther Tribe can properly train you in how to use your new-found strength, speed and agility, as of this moment you are the Panther Tribe Summoner; but not only that, once you are of age, you will be tested one more time, to see if you can become the new Black Panther; and from this moment on, we will begin your training."


End file.
